Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Lament for the LAN Party

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 161 posts

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#11

Post by cptskippy »

imrehg wrote: post #8
cptskippy wrote: post #5

We still get together to play a variety of games from AOE2 to CS to BFBC2. The last time we got together we had way too much fun with Blockstorm which is like Minecraft meets Quake. I remember Doom, Decent, and Aces of the Pacific were popular too.

Duke Nukem 3D and Starcraft, great times :)

The first time I played StarCraft was on a Friday afternoon at my new job. It was an insurance company that had all their PCs on a 10/100 network and the owner and head of IT coaxed people into playing so they could have a frag fest. I still hate that game.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#12

Post by mey »

cptskippy wrote: post #9
Bromskloss wrote: post #7

> The LAN party, where you and six mates cram yourself into a dining room for a weekend, hook up your PCs with a complex series of switches, routers and CAT9 cables, somehow became quite the thing. What is a CAT9 cable?

Judging by a Google image search, cat9 would have made for an interesting addition to a LAN party.

I will admit I have rigged up Tribes 1 over a null modem cable back in the day for local lan play.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#13

Post by mpeg »

Growing up, my way to make money for the summer was playing RTS games competitively at LAN parties and regional/national tournaments - way before e-sports were a thing outside of South Korea.

I met people from the internet at big LAN parties, I got introduced to the demoscene, wargames / CTFs and a whole lot of other things that shaped my career; I even ended up dating girls from that world.

Is there anything equivalent to the old internet cafe for kids these days? Or (active) IRC channels, for the matter.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#14

Post by cptskippy »

mey wrote: post #12
cptskippy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by a Google image search, cat9 would have made for an interesting addition to a LAN party.

I will admit I have rigged up Tribes 1 over a null modem cable back in the day for local lan play.

The first time I played Quake multiplayer was over modem with my neighbor. His dad had one of those USRobotics V.everything modems and I had a USR Sportster 28k. They negotiated some proprietary protocol like v42 because we had a 140k connect. It was insane at the time.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#16

Post by tracker1 »

cptskippy wrote: post #5

We still get together to play a variety of games from AOE2 to CS to BFBC2. The last time we got together we had way too much fun with Blockstorm which is like Minecraft meets Quake. I remember Doom, Decent, and Aces of the Pacific were popular too.

I remember playing the original TF Quake 1 mod... that was a lot of fun back then... same for Doom 2, gkdm3 was my all time fav wad.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#17

Post by tracker1 »

Bromskloss wrote: post #7

> The LAN party, where you and six mates cram yourself into a dining room for a weekend, hook up your PCs with a complex series of switches, routers and CAT9 cables, somehow became quite the thing. What is a CAT9 cable?

No idea, I remember playing around with 10-base-t coax a few times...

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#18

Post by NeutronBoy »

Probably about 4 times per year on a long weekend, my mates and I still get together in someone's warehouse or garage and have a 3 day LAN. There's normally between 15-20 people, and we play a mix of CS:Source, Warcraft 3 custom maps, AoE, Dota 2, and whatever else the fashion is at the time. A recent one has been Spintires, which is a blast with 4 people!

That said, the amount of sleep and the quality of the food we eat has definitely improved in the last 15 years or so - no more fast food for all meals.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#19

Post by khedoros »

In middle school, I helped organize a weekly "computer club" that met after hours in a school computer lab. It quickly degenerated into a giant Starcraft lan party every week, and became much more popular as a result.

In early high school, I played a lot of Tribes 1 (with some mod that I don't remember the name of) and Aliens vs Predator.

In later high school, CS 1.6 and Deus Ex multiplayer, still with Starcraft mixed in.

In college, it was "flavor of the month". We had a crazy file-sharing network, so the common in-dorm games switched around all the time. Warcraft 3, Counterstrike, Halflife 2-based mods, various open source FPSes, tons of Halo 2+3, and locally-hosted WoW servers are what stick in my mind.

Re: A Lament for the LAN Party

#20

Post by mpeg »

djrogers wrote: post #2

For us it was and ever shall be Age of Empires. Wololo!

AoE1 and 2 were such great games.

I owe some of my high school social life to the fact I could beat anyone there at aoe, so I made friends with some of the older kids by teaching them good builds.

Post reply on HN